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Songbird Scepter
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Impromptu Lesson
My daughter and I went to a popular walking trail last night, looking for warblers. We saw a few interesting birds, and on the way in we also saw this painted turtle out in the open.
There are wetlands all around the trail, so we didn’t think much of it. We figured it was crossing the trail to find a spot lay eggs. But on the way back, a couple were seated on the grass beside the turtle, and they told us that she was laying eggs.
Indeed she was — or rather, preparing to. It was a neat experience to watch her laboriously digging the hole with her hind legs.
We’ve read that turtles lay eggs, but it was a very different experience to watch her in action for awhile. She would scrape deeply with one leg, shift, scrape deeply with the other, and then moisten the cavity periodically with her own fluids. She was intent on her work and completely undaunted by the four spectators she had accumulated.
We observed her for 10 minutes or so, then went on our way. This morning, I went running down at the same trail, and when I checked the spot it looked like this.
Why did she choose that spot — in mown grass along a paved trail, in not-particularly-moist ground? Presumably the eggs are below-ground, 5-10 cm according to what I read this morning. Sometimes painted turtles dig “false nests” before settling on the site where they actually lay their eggs, but without digging in myself I’ll never know. She certainly had done some serious excavation and turned up all those small stones.
Apparently the eggs will hatch in August or September, and the baby turtles may not come out, but may arrange themselves symmetrically in the nest and winter there. We won’t expect any juvenile turtle sightings anytime soon! But what good moment to have passed by.
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Another delightful find
An American redstart nest!
American redstarts and yellow warblers are both gorgeous little birds I’ve noticed for the first time over the last year. They’re also resourceful. Both are often targeted by brown-headed cowbirds, who lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Redstarts and yellow warblers, when they notice a cowbird egg, counter by building another layer of nest over the top.
I’d love to see the male redstart, which is more colorfully marked. I saw my first one last year, not far from the site of this nest. This seems like a promising vicinity to see another one!
Last year’s redstart sighting -
Bathing Beauties
There is debate about many things related to bird behavior: how, and whether, they “teach” their young; how they chart their migratory courses; why they do this or that. But when I see a bird taking a bath, there’s no question in my mind that they are having a blast! The only creatures who like to play in the water more than my daughters are the birds.
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Hidden
My daughter spotted this yellow warbler nest on a walk we took this morning. It’s a great example of something I’ve marveled about before: more eyes = more wonders. It seems like you would see more going alone into the woods because it’s much quieter and less disruptive. But you never know what you miss for the lack of additional eyes. I’ve seen some neat things by myself, but this one I’d have missed entirely!
The girls are excited about going back each week to investigate the nest activity.
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Final fledge, and other neighborhood hawks
Chick #3 a few hours before fledging The girls and I went to Cornell yesterday morning with the awareness that it would probably be fledge day for the final eyass. As it turned out, the chick did fledge, but not till later in the day. It was chilly and overcast during the two hours we waited at the nest site, and though we did see all three chicks, there wasn’t a lot going on.
“Look, Sis — it’s the two-leggeds again.” 
Imagining flight… 
Big stretch For a tenth of what my parking ticket cost last week, I purchased a two-hour visitor permit, and during that time the girls and I enjoyed meeting a few other folks from the hawk chat. Almost everyone who drove, biked, or walked past did so while craning their necks, looking up at the tower. Everyone seemed aware of C3; one young woman who passed by said that she walked by every day on her way to work. “I think about how amazing it would be if the third one jumped off and flew while I was on my way past!” she said.
The chick’s first flight was marvelous, and probably the first intentional fledge of the three. The first two appeared to fledge by accident, blown from their perches by a breeze, but this one took off like a pro. I wasn’t watching at the time, so I was glad for this video capture.
Best of luck to you, C3!
My parking permit ran out around 1:00, just as the sun was starting to break through. So we ate our bag lunches and then drove around for awhile, visiting some sites of interest to us raptor geeks.
One was a large pheasant farm to the Northeast of the nest. Someone told me that it produces pretty much all of the pheasants in the state, and when it was proposed recently that funding be cut because of the state’s economic woes, there was quite a protest.
One of the three or four fields of pheasants However, it’s not only humans who appreciate the pheasant farm. There were flocks of pigeons, crows, and blackbirds there, pilfering the feed (or so we guessed). One turkey vulture visited, for some mysterious reason. I’ve heard that they frequent natural gas lines because of the smell of decay. I doubt that there were any dead pheasants around; it’s to all appearances a very well-maintained farm. But maybe there was some other explanation.
A pheasant would be too heavy for a hawk to carry away in most cases. But the pigeons and, likely, small rodents attracted by the feed must in turn attract hawks, because there was a pair of redtails there.
A hawk perches on the right-hand pole, studying the pheasant farm across the road. 
A harrassed hawk Just to the southeast is a long field of utility poles. The southern end of the field is visible sometimes when the cam pans the landscape near the cemetery where Ezra is thought to hunt. Back in April, we observed a pair of redtails actually mating atop one of the poles. They were there again yesterday.
Hawk flying with legs down — a new sight for me 
A hawk is perched on the near pole. Bradfield Hall, a tall brick building near the cam hawk nest, is visible in the distance. Was this one pair of hawks, or two? Was the pair monitoring the pheasant farm Red and Ezra? We could only be at one place at a time, but we can say for sure that there is at least one other pair of redtails in Big Red and Ezra’s near neighborhood, and perhaps two. The utility field hawks look enough like Red and Ezra to be twins, but they’re definitely different hawks based on what we observed back in April.
It was interesting to get a slightly expanded sense of the hawk neighborhood. Watching the cams, it’s easy to develop tunnel vision, but the hawks live in a place full of raptor-friendly habitat. I’m sure they all have their invisible but well-defended “property lines” and the place will be full of young hawks learning to fly and hunt this summer.
Probably not everyone is excited about this!
Timmy Tiptoes, posing for me across the street from Red and Ezra’s nest -
Cornell Hawks: An 11-year-old’s view
Artist at work My daughter has been documenting the drama of the hawks featured in Cornell University’s red-tail nest cam. It was not an assignment, but something she’s done on her own initiative. There have been multiple revisions of some of the pages as she’s worked to get the details right in illustration and writing.
Last week we visited the campus and were there when the first chick fledged. She came home and finished the project. I think she’s done a really great job of capturing the highlights of the red-tail family’s journey! So I’m sharing the book here as a tribute to her diligence as well as to the impact of the cams as an educational experience.
Yes, there will be more to the story of the hawks, but this is probably where this particular book will leave it. She may go back and type the text and tweak here and there, but the substance is completed. I’m glad she stuck with it all the way to the end! It testifies to the impact learning and caring about something can have.
I’ve written about our real-life visits to the hawks on April 7 (at my other blog), May 12, May 27, and June 6. A few more thoughts and pics from June 6 are here. Our family has had a great time following them through the nesting season!
3/4 of the Raptor Geek Squad, April 7 I’m submitting this post to the Outdoor Hour Challenge, to be published on the last day of June.
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Celebrity Herons
We went to Sapsucker Woods the other day and saw the bowl-full-of teenagers (a.k.a. herons’ nest) chatting and looking around out in the pond.
Then we noticed what they were viewing from their balcony seats. Down in the pond, one of the adult herons looked to the right…
…and looked to the left…
…and looked at us.
"Oh goody. Another photographer." So very patient. We waited and watched and were eventually reminded that all things come to those who wait.
In addition to its children watching from the nest, there is a dragonfly watching the whole show in the right foreground. Someone else was watching, too.
Who was in his turn being observed by others…
Frog Paparazzi One of the funniest things I saw was a frog literally racing across the lily pads directly in front of the hunting heron. I saw at least two frogs do this. Were they adolescents daring one another to ring the doorbell of their grumpy neighbor? The stakes were pretty high for the frogs! But apparently the heron had an appetite for fish.
While watching the heron, several different dragonflies demanded our attention as well. There were this one,
this one,
this one,
and these two shameless exhibitionists. The female is laying eggs, we guessed.
We heard many more birds than we saw. But this is a new one for me, a great crested flycatcher.
The other new sighting for me was a pair of American redstarts. I’ve seen the male before, but not the female.
We were very hot by the time our stroll ended, so we ate the lunch we’d brought and drank gallons of water before heading back home. Older Daughter enjoyed the heron fishing the most, Younger Daughter liked the frogs, and I liked the redstarts. So there was something for everyone and more besides — as usual!
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Serenity Wood
I took a walk today in a favorite place called the Serenity Wood. It was very hot, and I saw many things as I explored woods and meadows: yellow-throats, house wrens, an eastern towhee, a Baltimore oriole. There were deer tracks, coyote tracks, and raccoon tracks in the mud. Robins and sparrows and yellow warblers and chestnut-sided warblers hopped among the leaves. And there were catbirds — always catbirds.
I heard a brown thrasher at one point, and later on I thought this bird, startled up out of the grass beside the trail, was a thrasher. But it was quiet, and it had a shorter tail. I think it was a wood thrush, nesting in the grass. I was delighted to make her acquaintance!
*Edited to add: I’m thinking it may be more likely that this is a hermit thrush, because of the striping on the throat. Very pleased to meet this beautiful songster!
This tiny pearl crescent butterfly was a welcome sight too. Exquisite.
Not everyone is so picturesque, of course. And though the woods were full of noise — squeaking chipmunks, an ovenbird, red-eyed vireos, rustling leaves — some were in a more quiet, meditative mood.
He owes me a smile for not stepping on him as he lay there in the middle of the trail. No gratitude. (It must be confessed: I like toads. As a child I would spend whole afternoons collecting them in coffee cans, then let them all go at the end of the day. I was certain they recognized me as their benefactress.)
I saw the fawn I had the close encounter with last week, too. It might have been a different one, but I prefer to think it’s the same one, developing on schedule. Unbeknownst to me, I was standing right next to it in the trail; it was in the long grass beside me. I didn’t realize it till I gave up on trying to take a picture of the towhee, and took a step. The little fawn thrashed to its feet and disappeared into the brush with a flick of its tail. I was glad… I want it to know enough to run from strange critters like humans.
It was a nice, leisurely walk — perfect outing for a Sunday afternoon.
Yellow-striped hunter -
Mighty Mouse
On Tuesday we went to visit the site of a suspected red-bellied woodpecker nest cavity on one of our haunts. I wondered if we might see some nestling activity.
I took these pictures on May 11, and the bird appeared to be feeding young. We hadn’t been able to observe the site again, and I knew that by this time, there was a good chance that any possible woodpecker nestlings had fledged.
Turned out I was right. We saw nary a woodpecker… but this tufted titmouse came flying briskly out of the woodpecker hole!
I’m not sure if the titmouse is nesting in the woodpecker’s former home, or if it was just foraging for insects in there. We’ll have to check in again soon to see what we can find out.
It’s a brave looking little bird, isn’t it? — Looks like it feels ready for anything.
